$60,000 Cash Withdrawals

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31672, 7 May 1968, Page 32

$60,000 Cash Withdrawals

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, May 6. Evidence that more than £30,000 in cash had been withdrawn from bank accounts run by Leidrum and Hartnell, Ltd, was given in the Supreme Court at Auckland today. Robert John Gardner, aged 39, a company director, faces 19 counts of false pretences involving a total of £11,096. The offences are alleged to have been committed in April, May and June, 1966. The trial, before Mr Justice Moller and a jury, is expected to last another two weeks.

Mr C. M. Nicholson appears for the Crown and Mr L. W. Brown for Gardner. The charges allege the obtaining of cheques in favour of Leidrum and Hartnell, Ltd, by falsely representing that the company was carrying on a bona fide business. An advertising executive told the court how he prepared a schedule for an £lB,OOO advertising campaign for Leidrum and Hartnell cosmetics in 1966 but was not authorised to proceed with it. John Douglas Henderson, an executive with Cassrels Advertising,) Ltd, said in evidence that he arranged for the insertion of Leidrum and Hartnell agency advertisements in newspapers in the North and South Islands in March, 1966. Three-month Campaign

Gardner said he was prepared to spend £20,000 on a three-month campaign. The witness said he prepared an advertising schedule and after he showed it to Gardner minor revisions were made.

He prepared a second draft. In the first, the advertisements were to begin on June 20 and in the second they were to start on June 27. The cost of the second schedule was £18,363 10s 6d. The witness said he showed Gardner the second schedule during the latter part of May. He was to await authority' to go ahead with the campaign. After waiting about a week he phoned Gardner’s office and was told Gardner was not available but would contact him. Considerable work was involved in the campaign, the witness said. It would have been highly difficult to get it under way if he had been notified on June 17 or later. He was never given authority to proceed. Leidrum and Hartnell had paid accounts to the adver-

rising agency of £220 4s for March and £205 12s for April, the witness said. But an account for £lO3 4s 4d for May and June was not paid.

Lodged Money Frederick Charles Mills, a public accountant and a director of Cassrels Advertising, Ltd, said he had arranged with Gardner to lodge money with a finance company as soon as authority had been given to Cassrels to launch a press advertising campaign. The money would be paid to Cassrels from the finance company when the Cassrel account fell due. The company had taken this step as it had not been prepared to spend large sums of money on a credit risk.

John Spencer Watson, sales manager for a carrying firm, said his firm took packages

and consigned them for Leidrum and Hartnell in June, 1966. On June 17, his firm held up to 200 cartons of stands, and some cartons of cosmetics.

Lionel Stanley Ormandy, formerly assistant manager of the Jean Batten Place branch of the National Bank of New Zealand, Ltd, said Gardner gave him a letter of introduction from the Rural Bank of New South Wales. Gardner opened an account for Leidrum and Hartnell, Ltd, on February 21, 1966. Cheques could be signed by Gardner alone or by the assistant vice-president, Patricia Imelda May Keane, and the national marketing manager, Noel James McGurgan, jointly. Gardner explained that a company with a paid up capital of £lOO was being formed to make and market cosmetics.

Mr Ormandy gave evidence of deposits credited to the company’s account and of large cash withdrawals, many of them in £1 notes. He said that at Iris request, Leidrum and Hartnell’s account was closed on June 14. Mr Ormandy said he had earlier asked Gardner about the liquidation of the Australian cosmetic company. Gardner had said it was being absorbed by Unigroup. Mr Ormandy said that until the budget on June 16, 1966, £1 and 10s notes could he repatriated. Travellers leaving New Zealand were permitted to take £lO and' £1 and 10s notes. Keith Barrett Lockett, an officer at the Commercial Bank of Australia, said that on June 9, 1966, Leidrum and Hartnell, Ltd, opened an account Mr Lockett described the deposit and withdrawal of sums totalling more than £30,000. -,